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Developing countries want costless financing mechanism

Mr Amoah Antwi Boasiako, Principal Programme Officer for Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation has identified lost and damage as a key challenge to parties in the Paris Agreement negotiations especially the cost associated with it.

He said “it looks like the developed countries want to address it through insurance, but that is not how developing countries want it.”

Mr Boasiako who said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency on the sidelines of the negotiations during the COP23 in Bonn, Germany said “we want a mechanism where innovative financing is allocated not at a cost to the person already suffering.”

This he noted was because “if I am going to pay premium to address an issue which I did not cause, then definitely you are not giving me long-term solution and you are even complicating it.” he explained.

Mr Boasiako said that as was done with adaptation, loss and damage were also expected to get a whole financial package through innovative financing, adding “we need something that is dedicated in terms of reliable new financial and additional mechanism and not the approach that is being used which is depending on insurance where the premium is paid by the person who is suffering.”

In said in Warsaw, they had a work programme, but “ what we have now is just a typical technical work progamme, adding, how do you transition this into something touchable, physical financial mechanism that can address this issue as no one control over problems like hurricanes so that if there is a hurricane coming, how do you insure that and in agriculture, it should not be at the cost of the peasant farmer who has lost all his things because the climate has changed?”

According to Mr Boasiako, parties were looking at transparency of actions and in all the efforts that were to be put in place.

“From Paris up to date parties are saying that they want differentiation meaning that countries or parties are not at the same level, parties, countries have different capacities and different national circumstances, therefore the development of rules and procedures should be designed in a way that will reflect these varied national circumstances and that is what makes it very complex to us.”

He indicated that mitigation was not that of a problem ‘because once you have your indicators in place, you know how much tonnes of carbon to reduce but for adaptation, that where countries have their specific national interest.’

He noted that agriculture and food security were of interest to Ghana but questioned issues in agriculture could be addressed vis a vis water and other issues.The EPA officer also noted that some of Ghana’s coastal areas were affected when it comes to sea level rise and if plans were not taken the country could be affected in the future.